


just because it burns

by Liu



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: Mick could never quite explain why he was so drawn to fire.
Ray never really understood where his life-long nightmares about burning came from.





	just because it burns

**Author's Note:**

> Fic for an anon prompt on tumblr: atomwave + soulmates AU. (original post [here](http://pheuthe.tumblr.com/post/150416332727/atomwave-1))

Mick could never quite explain what it is about fire that draws him in.

Not that anyone has ever asked; the shrinks at the juvy repeated the same questions over and over, _did you do it_  at first, and later on when he would not answer, _how did it make you feel_ and _do you regret it_  and _do you have the urge to repeat the act._

In all honesty, Mick has never really figured it out himself. He remembers being eighteen and staring into the tiny flame of a lighter; the next second, all he knew was the stifling heat and the smoke that filled his lungs until breathing was almost impossible.

He did watch the house disappear in front of his eyes - the shrink told him that one of the firefighters reported Mick smiling, like he was happy to see the disaster. 

Mick does not recall joy - but he does remember feeling like he saw it all before, like there was something he should’ve done and didn’t. 

It’s the feeling that keeps haunting him throughout his life. When a job goes wrong and his torso ends up covered in badly-healed burn marks, scar tissue clotted tight and painful, it feels like satisfaction, like he deserves it, like he is _supposed_ tohave all these scars, but it’s a strange feeling so Mick doesn’t dwell on it. Emotions, that’s a thing he’s not good with; they burn and consume just like fire, without the familiarity, the ease that comes with pouring gasoline over the floor and striking a match. 

When he watches yet another building go up in flames, there’s always a moment when his foot almost jerks forward, as if his body is trying to make him do… _something_. Mick never really figures out what it is, makes himself stand still and tells himself that all he wants is get closer to the flames.

It doesn’t click until he’s forty-five, give or take a couple hundred - it’s pretty hard to tell, what with the fucking Vanishing Point’s warped time. Rip’s just screwed up and Mick is hardly surprised, but the moment for sarcastic commenting on Hunter’s leadership will come when there won’t be a building falling down around their ears. (Sarcasm still stings, just a little, because Mick keeps expecting it to be delivered in Snart’s bitchy drawl.)  
  
The building’s burning, and this time, it’s not even Mick’s fault: they’re running as fast as they can, weaving around the weird-ass pillars that were supposed to give them some cover, aiming for the only way out. Mick yanks Stein up to his feet when the old man stumbles, then yells at Jax to join with the Professor, give him an actual chance in hell- but before he can finish the sentence, he hears a loud crash and a yelp. Mick pushes the old man forward and turns back towards the source of that sound - and of course, of fucking _course_  Palmer’s suit has malfunctioned, probably due to the heat. He’s on the ground, motionless among the flames licking up to the high ceiling, looking all but powerless against the forces of nature trying to get to him through his suit.  
  
Mick takes a step forward and his breath catches in his throat, already scratchy from all the smoke.

He knows this feeling, this urge to _move_ , to _do_ , tingling right under his skin, twitching in his limbs: except right now there is something he _can_  do, and he stumbles forward, half-unseeing as he tries to stop thinking, stop _feeling_  this mess in his head. 

He watches a burning wooden beam crack and topple, crashing over Palmer’s legs, and something in Mick’s chest seizes at the sight, twists and coils as if the pain were his own. 

He goes down on his knees next to Palmer, more falling forward than moving, and pushes his helmet away - it’s cracked and probably not doing shit for the guy’s oxygen intake anyway. The scientist coughs and tries to smile at Mick, which is a sure sign he’s still alive, though his health is relative due to the heavy weight crushing his knee and probably burning through the circuits in that useless tin can of his.   
  
Mick doesn’t really think about it - he scrambles up and moves, hands curling underneath the burning wood. He can feel the heat even through his Chronos suit - and shit, is he glad he didn’t throw the damn thing away - but it will do for now, it _has to._ Palmer is saying something, trying to shout, but his words dissolve into a coughing fit. Mick pushes; the beam gives way, excruciatingly slowly. He can feel the skin of his neck and face getting singed, and it hurts, but it also feels _right_ , like that time when he got all those other scars - and Mick’s never been a looker, so he doesn’t give a fuck.  
  
All he knows is that as the weight of the beam moves and his whole body screams from the exertion, something in his chest crumbles, something heavy and unspeakable.   
  
When he finally hauls Palmer to his feet, wraps an arm around his waist and more carries than drags him outside, it’s easier to breathe, even through all the thick smoke filling the air. 

…

Mick’s in bed and in a sour mood when Palmer finds him. He’s not even sure how he knows it’s the scientist shuffling his feet in the doorway; he ascribes it half to the Chronos training, keeping alert at all times, and half to the fact that Palmer’s the only one who hasn’t come to bother Mick about his face yet. Mick refuses to get up from his relatively comfortable position, lying on his side with his back to the door. Yeah, it has him a bit on edge, but no more than the bullshit he’s had to put up with for the past couple of days

_Get it fixed_ , they’ve all said, but none of them understand that he _did_ , as much as he was comfortable with. The burn is just a scar now instead of the raw wound it should be after only seventy-two hours, and Mick considers that fixed, unlike his ‘teammates’ who don’t understand that the scar stretching across his jaw, up his cheek and pulling at his eyelid, is  _vital_. Yes, it hurts - some days, it’s really fucking bad. But the pain lifts that weight from his chest, the weight he’s been living with for so long that he forgot what it was not to bend under it. Maybe he never knew what it felt like to live without it; maybe it’s always been there.

It’s gone now, or at least faded, and if Mick has to keep his face marked and hurting in order to be able to take a deep breath, then he will fucking do it, no matter what his so-called teammates think about his looks.

“I ain’t getting it fixed,” he snarls, not bothering to turn. Another shuffle of feet, anxious, uncertain, quieter for a moment as if Palmer is taking a step back, away from Mick.

And then, footsteps again, the door sliding closed on its own as Palmer crosses the threshold uninvited.

The mattress dips; Mick can feel the heat of Palmer’s body against the small of his back.

“I know.”

That’s… not what Mick expected the guy to say. He shifts on the mattress without really giving his body the command; his hip brushes against Palmer’s back, the bed really not as big as it could be, to accommodate a man Mick’s size.

Palmer looks at him, and his eyes don’t search for a point on Mick’s face that isn’t burned. There’s no visible effort in the man’s look, no _don’t stare_  or _don’t let him know how uneasy he makes me_. Mick has read that same shit in the eyes of everyone else - but Pretty Boy, oh, no, he just looks at Mick, steady and soft like always, like he finds some Greater Good where there’s none, not as far as Mick can tell. 

It’s humbling and unsettling and irritating, and Mick pushes up onto his elbows, giving the guy a glare in return.

“The fuck do you want?”

“To say thank you,” Palmer shrugs, and looks down at his hands - large and unmarked and _pretty_ , like everything about him. Mick waits him out; it’s clear that some misplaced sense of gratitude isn’t why he’s come. After all, he’s pulled Mick out of some fucked-up shit in the past months, too - Mick doesn’t think anyone on the team is really keeping tabs on life debts anymore. 

“And?” he prompts, when the silence stretches on too long; just because it’s been easier to breathe with the constant ache in his newly acquired scar doesn’t mean that any wonders happened in terms of Mick’s patience. Palmer looks at him, again, and the look sears a path down to Mick’s core - he sits up and draws his knees closer to his chest, an irrational wish to be on eye-level with Palmer warring with the primitive instinct to protect his vulnerable parts. 

Palmer swallows and his throat moves in a way that draws Mick’s eyes in - for a second, there’s that coil of anticipation in his stomach that used to be there when he stared into a flame. 

“I… I’ve always dreamed of burning,” the man speaks, finally, and Mick raises an eyebrow (tries not to think of the master of that expression, the master of prompting people to speak - or shoot - with just one grimace). “Or, not really ‘dreamed’ - they were nightmares, really. I can’t remember when they started, I was just a child, but… there it was, a burning house and me, trapped inside it. And I always knew that someone would come, I just _knew_ , I kept hoping… but nobody ever did before I, um. Before I woke up.”

_Died_ , Mick supplied in his mind, _Palmer wanted to say ‘before I died’_. Something about that resonates within Mick, the thought of a little child dreaming of dying, but he fails to see why he should care.

(He does, strangely, more than he knows what to do with, but he won’t ever admit that out loud.)

“So this is about some damsel-in-distress fantasy of yours?”

Palmer, to Mick’s surprise, draws in a sharp breath, smooth cheeks staining red. He refuses to look away, though, the brave bastard - Mick wishes the man were just a little bit more of a coward in this very moment.

“It was always the same house,” Palmer continues, like he hasn’t noticed that his childhood story isn’t welcome, “I thought I must’ve seen it somewhere as a baby, fixated on the memory… but then I saw it again, exactly as I’ve seen it in my dreams.”

“Sounds like you were right, then,” Mick huffs - his hands are itching to reach out, grab, do _something_ , and it’s far too similar to the urges he used to have to move towards the fire. He doesn’t know how, but he’s certain that those are gone now; he’s in no hurry to acquire another nonsensical compulsion thanks to Palmer’s awful storytelling. 

“No, I wasn’t. I could not have seen that house before… it was destroyed in 1776. Burned, to the ground. It was a watchmaker’s shop.”

Watchmaker. An image flashes in Mick’s mind, more of a feeling, really, of a smiling man looking proudly at the freshly painted words over a doorway to a tiny shop. He tries to tell himself that he _could_ have, in fact, seen the guy a month ago, on their trip back to New York, 1776. 

And he could have… but it doesn’t explain the sense of fondness, distant but distinctive, that washes over Mick and leaves him staring at Palmer with incredulity.

Contrary to popular belief, Mick is not stupid. He’s spent enough years with the Time Masters, more than enough time watching the Hawks mope about their past lives, to know where this is going.

“You’re not telling me-”

“I sneaked out to see that shop, before the fire. There was a watchmaker, and a soldier. They were… I think the watchmaker was waiting, the night of the fire.”

Palmer reaches out then, puts a hand on Mick’s knee, and there’s an intense wave of _yes no good wrong right right_ _ **right**_ that shakes through Mick like an earthquake. He’s never had that with any of the (allegedly short) list of his one-night stands and stress-reliefs, not even with those who came back a couple times. 

It’s strange to think that Palmer’s touch should be the one to burn itself into Mick’s skin, even through the thick fabric of Mick’s pants. 

“You know,” the scientist continues, watching his own fingers curled lightly across the curve of Mick’s bent knee, like he’s experiencing the same displaced _rightness_  of the situation, “there were theories, about phobias and manias having roots in the past lives. I think the time travel… it might’ve unlocked… something. In me.”

It feels like he tacked on those last two words as a safety net in case Mick pushes him away; odd how dishonest that should feel, when Mick is certain that both of them know it’s not just Palmer’s fault, Palmer’s memories of a life not really his. It’s not like Kendra and Carter - Haircut’s no supernatural creature, and neither is Mick himself, no matter what the Time Masters tried to drill into his head. He doubts that the watchmaker or the soldier looked anything like either of them - and yet, when Mick allows his mind to wander back to his own occasional dreams, smoke-filled streets and people screaming, he knows, deep down, that Palmer’s on to something.

Mick doesn’t want it to be true - but he knows from experience that closing his eyes has never shielded anyone from the burn of reality, so he doesn’t feign ignorance and meets Palmer’s eyes dead-on.

“Why are you here?” he asks, and Palmer barely flinches from the challenge.

“I don’t know.”

It sounds like the truth, because Mick knows what that truth _feels_ like, being propelled forward by some deep-seated urge without knowing what it even means or what the finish line should be. Raymond’s here because he’s stepping into the fire, like Mick tried to do for so many years he’s grown tired of pulling back.

It feels a little like taking that one crucial step when he covers Palmer’s cool, smooth fingers with his own, rough and burned and old in a way that does not quite show in the flesh. Palmer draws in a sharp breath, surprise sparking in those dark eyes, and Mick wonders if they’ll crash and burn, and how quickly.

But then, Mick tries to imagine wanting someone so much that it would transcend time and space and _death_ , wanting to save someone or waiting to be saved so deeply, and he thinks that maybe it’s at least worth a shot. The one thing he always wanted more than anything was the one thing he could never understand or name or explain - now that he knows the direction he’s been trying to take for so many years, he would be doing himself a disservice if he turned away. 

And maybe Palmer’s a little too tempted by the melodramatic appeal of want spanning across three centuries, always the hopeless romantic, the naive sap… but Mick can’t really find much wrong with that. He’s not yet certain he can live up to the expectations, to the demands of an emotion this intense… but it doesn’t feel alien or misplaced, like most things in Mick’s life have, and maybe, just maybe, it’s not that he’s bad with emotions as such, it’s just that he’s been subconsciously waiting for _this one_.   
  
He squeezes Palmer’s fingers, just once, and then gives him another raised eyebrow.

“I still ain’t fixing my face.”

Palmer’s eyes light up and his mouth curves into a pretty smile - he looks too damn precious to waste on the likes of Mick, but that just means Mick will have to take extra care to always pull this guy out of the fire.

Palmer pulls his hand out of Mick’s grip, just to run the pads of his fingers across the warped, angry-red tissue of Mick’s newest scar, and it feels like he’s taking the pain away, bit by bit, leaving behind only an odd tingle that makes Mick heave a relieved sigh. 

“There’s nothing to fix.”

_Yeah there is_ , Mick thinks, but doesn’t argue. After all, Palmer’s proven good at fixing a lot of broken shit, finding creative ways to patch up what should’ve been trash. It feels like he might just find a way to fix Mick, too - not his scars, and not the other things most people found too difficult or too unpleasant to deal with, but the few things that even Mick didn’t know were broken, until now. 

When Palmer leans closer, his minty breath warm against Mick’s lips, there’s an image of a tiny shop filled with beautifully-crafted watches and a man with a kind smile and nimble hands behind the counter just for a split second before the promise of a kiss becomes the deed itself. After that, Mick doesn’t have the time to think about much else.

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](http://pheuthe.tumblr.com/).


End file.
